Principal Software Engineer (Cortex Vulnerability Experience Platform)

Cortex by Palo Alto Networks

Cortex by Palo Alto Networks

Software Engineering
Santa Clara, CA, USA
Posted on Dec 19, 2025

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Description

Your Career

The Cortex Vulnerability Experience Platform team is expanding, and we’re looking for a Full Stack Engineer to join our team. This team is responsible for building unified vulnerability and exposure management experience within XSIAM. This experience involves visualizing, prioritizing and remediating the posture security problems (vulnerabilities, misconfigurations etc) in the customer’s environment.

Your Impact

  • Design, build, and maintain the features for the unified vulnerability and exposure management experience

  • Take part in architecture strategy sessions - design solutions that accommodate the requirements of the various groups across Cortex

  • Collaborate with teams to solve problems, reduce technical debt, and evolve development practices

  • Drive technical best practices and evangelize new technologies within the engineering org

  • Collaborate with other engineers and ensure that your team delivers high-quality output

  • Take ownership of projects, drive them to completion, and support them in production

  • Be a champion of test driven development

Qualifications

Your Experience

  • 6+ years of experience as a professional software engineer writing software

  • Strong Proficiency in Python

  • Experienced and opinionated about Software development and best practices across backend and frontend

  • Able to switch between research, design, prototype, and implementation

  • Working knowledge of at least one of the major cloud platforms (eg GCP, AWS, or Azure), preferably GCP

  • Experience with CI/CD process

  • Strong problem solving skills

  • Technical team leadership

  • Nice To Haves

  • Experience with Go, Angular and React

  • Common understanding of CVEs or Software vulnerabilities

  • Knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks and vulnerability methodologies

  • Proficiency in Linux and Windows operating systems

  • Demonstrates a basic understanding of how a variety of exploits work and shows skills in enumerating and selecting the correct exploit for a given system

  • Experience with Jenkins or Gitlab Runners

  • Experience with Grafana and Prometheus

  • Experience with StackDriver for log based debugging

  • Experience working in vulnerability management domain

  • Experience working with BigQuery

Additional Information

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $147,000 - $237,500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [email protected].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes